[jingo_man]

i am attempting to auto boot my installation of xbmc on a full ubuntu 9.10.

i have installed xbmc and xbmc-standalone packages, etc.

i can manually start xbmc from the menu's, however i would like it to automatically start on login/boot/startup.

i searched numerous threads regarding this, but none seem ideal and many are custom made/edited solutions, and now i have such info-overload i have lost my way! can someone please make this simpler for me?

i cannot install xbmc-live as a package, as this removes gdm, and i still want to retain the "full" aspect of the O/S for other things, such as editing files, updating components, etc.

but it would seem that this contains the basic mechanisms other have used to get their solution, in the following files: runXBMC.sh, setAlsaVolumes, diskmounter and xbmc-live.conf.

where can i get these files from? some mention from svn, but i dont know how exactly to do that, and i would like the same version of these scripts that matches up with the current version of my installation.

when i have these, what are the amendments people are making to get this working?

cheers

jingo_man

[rune0077]

It ought to fairly simple. Haven't used gnome for a while now, but if I remember correctly you can enable autologin from the menu system>administration>login window, then just check "allow autologin" or whatever it's called.

Then log out of the gnome-desktop with the log-out option which drops you into gdm. Here select your use name by clicking it and you should see some drop-down options at the bottom. One of these are called sessions - chose xbmc from this, then type in your password and you should log in to xbmc session (provided you have installed xbmc-standalone).

Gdm should remember your last session and always use that as default. And since you have enabled autologin, the next time you boot you should automatically drop into the xbmc session.

[joebrady]

This is how my system is set up. I'll try to remember to to take a look at how I did it if I have time tonight.

[jingo_man]

someone else has posted this to me along similar lines.

there was definitely no xbmc user account when i initially looked into it following exactly what you posted (and in another thread), even though i installed xbmc and xbmc-standalone.

this led me to start searching the forum and heading towards my info-overload!

the main guide i have been looking at is entitled [LINUX] HOW-TO make a standard Ubuntu installation into 'XBMCbuntu' set-top-box style

this starts off by adding in the xbmc user account, then installing xbmc-live, but as i said this then removes some other stuff and is possibly making too many other changes.

so my current situation is to try to mimic it, if possible...

i can follow the steps in the above guide to create the xbmc user account details.
i have also found a GUI-based SVN client and obtained the 4 scripts i mentioned in the opening post. just reading through them now and positioning them appropriately.

how will the system pick these up and execute? does every script in /etc/init/ get executed (i.e. xbmc-live.conf)? is this sufficiently late enough in the bootup sequence that other dependants are started up? and will it execute on the desktop session? any other gotcha's to look out for?

[vikjon0]

1) enable autologin in gnome (gdm)
2) Set the xbmc session (session, not user!!) as default. You do this in the the gdm login screen.

go!

This is inlcuded in the official guide in the wiki.

[rune0077]

There really should be no need to create a xbmc user account. You should be able to log into xbmc from gdm with your normal user no problem.

I just installed xbmc-standalone on my virtualbox Ubuntu to test it and it works fine. Again, at the gdm login screen, click your user name in the middle of the screen. At the bottom of the screen now you should be able to select things like "Language" and "Sessions", select Sessions and pick xbmc from this. Then type your password into the login box.

Do you not have an xbmc option under Sessions? If you do and you follow these instructions, do you not log into xbmc?

Again I can autologin to xbmc with a normal ubuntu install underneath just fine doing as mentioned in the first post.

Or are you actually trying to login to Gnome and then start xbmc from there? If that's the case, then just go to system>preferences>startup applications, select add from here, enter a name and enter "xbmc" as command (without the quotes) and xbmc should launch automatically every time you log into your gnome desktop.

[jingo_man]

ah ha!!!

apologies to all you guys - you were correct (in case i had any of you doubting yourselves...?! haha)

the only occurrence i saw of "xbmc" on that logon screen was the user account to log in as (in the middle). when you said "at the bottom" i suddenly realised that on my HDTV, i think the overscan was set too high.

hunting around for options on my samsung, i set it to "just scan" instead of 16:9 for picture size and voila... your magical options appeared at the bottom of the screen.

now i just have to figure out why lirc never works following a reboot (uninstall & reinstall brings it back tho...)

many thanks again!